Posts Tagged ‘equity’

Tweet Architecture is all about art and beauty and feeling good inside a building right? Wrong. Architecture is also all about codes and actual wood framing sizes vs nominal and how are you going to make sure that skylight won’t leak. Recently, I started working for a firm called Communitecture as a project manager/project architect. We are so busy that we are looking for another person who can lead projects by herself as well. We’ve talked with quite a few people and looked at quite a few resumes. What has become apparent in our search is that there are plenty…

Tweet In today’s world, we like to hail the bicycle as the instrument of freedom for the underprivileged, the poor and the oppressed. But bicycling began in the 1880s and 90s in a context of racism, sexism and classism and for the most part was reflective of that context. But that’s long gone history, right? Actually no, bicycling’s not-so-egalitarian beginnings still cast a shadow in today’s world of bicycling and bicycling advocacy and this is something we need to look out for. Did you know that… – In the late nineteenth century, there was anxiety over whether “white, nonimmigrant…

Tweet Similar to the notion of people who bike because they want to and people who bike because they have to, the person who is in the Bike Move #1 photo above is hauling stuff by bike because he has to. The person in Bike Move #2 photo is hauling stuff by bike because she wants to. The guy in Bike Move #1 would jump at an opportunity to move that stuff by car, but he’s moving it on his bike because he probably can’t afford a car. The person in Bike Move #2 has every opportunity to move that…

Tweet Apparently. The biking community in Portland is overwhelmingly white and seems to be comprised of the ultra fit who routinely go on 300-mile bike camping trips or insist on biking long and hilly distances in town, scoffing at those who choose easier, multi-modal ways of getting around. Don’t get me wrong, this level of fitness and dedication is laudable, certainly. But it’s also very intimidating and unusual. The biking community in Portland, at least the biking community I have been exposed to, tends to skew heavily (or should I say muscularly?) toward fit and environmentally conscious white people. Granted,…

Tweet Last night I finally watched the movie Elysium by South African director Neill Blomkamp. Besides falling back on typical meaningless violence and starting plot lines that were never fully explored, the sci-fi movie had a great premise. It posed a world where the “have nots”, mostly composed of hispanics and black people, lived in the detritus of blighted urban landscapes wracked by air pollution, poverty and little access to medical care and the “haves” lived on a space station that was mostly made up of resorts and golf courses and every home was equipped by a miraculous healing machine that…

Tweet Today’s post is the second installment in the Livability 101 Series. Guest writer Hart Noecker tells us about the equity gap in Portland’s livability equation. Hart is a writer and filmmaker in Portland, Oregon originally from Lansing, Michigan. He publishes his take on tactical urbanism and the Right to the City movement at Rebel Metropolis. Portland, Oregon is known nationally as a bikeable, walkable, livable place to call home. For many wealthier upper middle-class neighborhoods, this is true. Venture a ways outside the city core to the working class communities east of 82nd avenue and the livability reputation doesn’t…